“Dick, in Washington circles you get brownie points for that sort of behavior. The trick is, you have to do it after you’re elected. Not like, say, that slick lawyer who, while running for president, knocked up his aide—which we later learned about shortly before his wife was diagnosed with terminal cancer.”
Harris said, “Yeah. A real class act. No end of those types.”
“And each party has its share,” Payne said. “We just seem to have more than most in Philly.”
Carlucci turned back to the microphones.
“As you know,” he said, “Randle Bailey has long been a friend of our great city, first serving as the Philadelphia district attorney before becoming mayor. He then went on to be governor of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I think that it goes without saying that Randle has unique insight into what works here in our historic home.”
McCrory said, “That baggy suit of Bailey’s looks like it was cut from a circus tent.”
“Ha!” Kennedy said. “He could be a carny. Anyone want to start a betting pool for when he drops the first word that gets bleeped? First minute, second, third? Then how often each minute? He really lets them fly.”
“I’m in,” Nasuti said, pulling a dollar bill from his pocket, holding it out to Kennedy.
Kennedy, grinning, waved it away.
“In addition to the serious high crime rate we struggle with,” Carlucci went on, “there is a confidence issue concerning our police department. Some people have gone so far as to describe it as a trust that’s broken. We intend, beginning right now, to fix that, to regain the public’s full faith. I assure you that we will get to the root of these problems.”
“That’s easy,” McCrory said, “The problem is dietary. It’s always something from the three major food groups—drugs, money, weapons.”
Carlucci said, “These challenges are not unique to our city, of course. Others wrestle with it, too. But I was elected to lead. And that is why I recruited Randle Bailey. The result of his task force’s work is Operation Thunder Road, which will define law and order. We are assigning more veteran officers on Last Out, the midnight-to-eight shift when most violent crime occurs. Additionally, we are going to put two hundred academy grads on foot beats in crime hot spots. They will be supported by forty patrol cars rolling through known problem areas. Highway Patrol’s elite officers will be a constant sight.”
“Well, that’s a good start, Jerry,” Payne said. “But I bet it will result in more shootings—”
“You should know, Marshal,” Nasuti said, grinning.
“And how can you field academy grads when no one is getting recruited?”
“To support this,” Carlucci said, “as of today, those applying for consideration to join the department will no longer need college credits. A high school diploma or equivalent will suffice. There will also be a minimum age of twenty-two. And a new starting salary of fifty thousand dollars. Also, we are suspending the requirement that officers must live within the Philadelphia city limits.”
“Jesus H. Christ!” Harris said. “Now, that’s a huge one-eighty he’s taking. Carlucci was the one who championed the higher standards.”
“I’ve been told, in no uncertain terms,” Payne said, “that he’s under tremendous pressure to do something if he expects to get reelected. He’s apparently taking a number of actions he otherwise wouldn’t.”
When a couple heads turned to look at him, Payne added, “You didn’t hear that from me. And I damn sure never said it.”
Carlucci said, “Many other changes are being weighed and will be announced at a later date . . .”
All heads were now turned to look back at Payne.
“. . . We are confident that with these new changes we will fill the next class at the police academy with exceptional recruits who, after rigorous training, will complement all members of our exceptional police department.”
“Does he really believe what he’s saying?” McCrory said.
Carlucci looked around, then said, “Finally, I’m confident everyone will recognize, and welcome, the well-regarded Margaret Hart, who for twenty years was one of our city’s distinguished news anchors, before transitioning to talk radio . . .”
“Carlucci hates that woman,” Harris blurted. “When he was the commish, Maggie Hart called him out on everything. What else is he going to roll over for?”
Payne raised a brow but said nothing.
“Ms. Hart,” the mayor said, “is joining the department as chief of the Communications Unit, which oversees Public Affairs. I believe we all can agree that Ms. Hart enjoys a genuine connection with our fellow citizens, who now will find her the confident, trusted face of the Philadelphia Police Department.”
“My God,” McCrory added, “she’s the best face he could find? Her looks started going south in her thirties. By the time Baggy-eyed Maggie hit forty, you cursed the day they invented these high-definition televisions. When she finally got booted from TV—all the peroxide in the world couldn’t save her—radio was her only real option.”
“Wasn’t there a rumor that she and Randle had a fling years ago?” Harris said.
“I think you’re right,” Payne said. “And that sure would go a long way in explaining why she just got a nice two-hundred-grand do-nothing job from a city so deep in the red that it owes the pension fund six billion.”
“Okay,” Mayor Carlucci said, “I am told that we have time for a few questions.”
“Mr. Mayor,” a female voice said, “what is your response to the charge from the Concerned Citizens for Philadelphia that your announcement today of this new operation is a false flag to take the focus off the recent pay-for-play accusations made against you.”
Carlucci flashed a big smile.
“I’m afraid I don’t understand the question. What does this have to do with Operation Thunder Road?”
“My point precisely!” the female reporter said. “And there is the fact that you recently added to your staff two of Francis Fuller’s high-ranking executives who continue being paid by his corporate office. You just mentioned the public’s lack of faith. Shouldn’t these staffers have taken a leave of their company, at the very least, to avoid the appearance of undue influence on city business by Fuller—”
Carlucci’s face flushed. “That is preposterous!”
“And gone so far as to put their holdings in a blind trust so as to avoid any suggestion of personally enriching themselves while in office?” she finished.
“And that’s absolutely disingenuous,” Carlucci said. “Putting one’s investments in a blind trust does not stop one from being corrupt—”
“Mr. Mayor,” a male reporter interrupted, “then you are admitting that there’s corruption in your office?”
“That’s an outrageous suggestion!” Carlucci said as a slender, dark-haired thirty-year-old executive in a well-cut conservative suit stepped up. “You’re leaping to conclusions!”
“Ah, here’s Mr. Stein now,” the reporter said.
Chief Executive Advisor Edward Stein, Esquire, tugged at Carlucci’s jacket sleeve, and Carlucci stepped back from the microphones.
There arose a chorus of reporter voices: “Mr. Stein, Mr. Stein—”
Margaret Hart worked her way up to the microphones.
“I’ll be happy to take questions about today’s announcement of Operation Thunder Road,” she said. “Anyone?”
The look on Carlucci’s face was a mix of shock and anger. Stein grabbed him by the shoulder and ushered him toward the exit.
When the camera cut to the city council members, Willie Lane appeared to be holding back a thin smile.
So, Payne thought, a heavy dose of karma for Hizzoner.
How’s that working out for you, Jerry?
Maybe it is a good thing I’m getting forced out of here . . .
Payne’s phone vibrated, and he gl
anced at it.
“Matt Payne,” he said.
“Matt, Mason Morgan just had a heart attack,” Aimee Wolter said, her usual upbeat voice now a monotone.
“That’s impossible,” Payne heard himself reply with the first thing that popped to mind. “You have to have a heart for that to happen.”
He saw that that crack had gotten the attention of the others in the office.
“Wiseass,” Wolter said. “But I take your point . . .”
“Was it adequate?” he went on.
“What do you mean, adequate?”
“Everyone’s always saying, ‘So-and-so died today of a massive heart attack,’ when it really just takes an adequate one . . .”
There were chuckles around the room.
“Dead is dead,” Payne finished. “But, then again, Mason is himself rather massive.”
Payne noticed that Harris had turned his head at hearing Mason Morgan had had a massive heart attack.
“Jesus, Matt, who pissed in your coffee?” Aimee snapped. “He’s not dead. He’s having emergency surgery at Hahnemann. I think stents, to open some blockage.” She sighed. “Look, I need you to come to my office. Michael Grosse is here. He said you wanted to talk. And you damn sure need to hear what he has to say.”
“Sure. Be right there.”
[ TWO ]
House of Ming Condominiums
Ninth and Vine Streets
Chinatown
Philadelphia
Saturday, January 7, 12:55 P.M.
“Call me when you get this damn message, Willie,” John Austin barked into his cellular telephone as he raced up Ninth in the Tahoe. “I don’t care about your public appearances. Something’s going down. I got a text message that there’s been an emergency at the Ming Condo site. Call me.”
Austin broke off that call, then sneezed twice as he tried the project manager’s number again.
“Damn it! No answer!” he said, sniffling and rubbing his nose.
He turned off Ninth onto the crushed-stone-drive entrance, tires crunching as he pulled through the open double-door gates.
“What the hell?” he said aloud as he scanned the construction site. “Emergency? Nothing’s happening. Looks like there’s no one here.”
He braked hard, the SUV sliding to a stop behind one of the eighteen-wheeled tractor-trailers. It had a plastic-shrink-wrapped pod still strapped to its trailer. He grabbed the gearshift with his right hand and slammed it up into park.
A burning pain shot through his injured right arm.
“Damn it!” he said, cradling it with his left arm.
He used his left hand to open the driver’s door, then stepped out.
Scanning the area, he could not believe his eyes.
“It’s a goddamn ghost town,” he muttered.
He looked ahead of the big tractor-trailer rig and counted the nine others that had left Doylestown that morning. The very first one in line was parked beside the condominium’s main tower, where the bare iron-beamed skeleton of the building rose above the bottom three floors, which were mostly finished. The modular unit on the trailer had had its shrink-wrapping removed and had the lifting apparatus at the end of the tower crane’s cable attached to it.
Yet, the crane was silent. And when Austin looked up, he couldn’t see anyone in the operator’s cabin.
He sneezed three times, then, squeezing each nostril in turn, exhaled and shot mucus onto the bare-dirt ground.
Damn, I’m getting a cold, too? he thought.
He walked around the site for five or so minutes, becoming more and more furious, then headed for the main construction office, which had been housed inside a section of the ground floor that had been completed.
His telephone rang as he entered an exterior door.
“Jesus Christ, Willie,” he said, answering the call as he walked inside and proceeded to cross a large open area. “What does that son of a bitch want from me?”
“Johnny, he said he didn’t do it.”
“Oh, c’mon, I’m not stupid. Someone had to send those union bastards out there to protest—”
“He agreed, and said he would find out and get back to me.”
“And now there’s a work stoppage!” Austin went on. “I don’t believe him!”
Willie Lane sighed.
“Johnny, I guarantee you that Joey Fitz would tell me, and he said that he had nothing to do with it.”
“And I’m saying that’s bullshit! I’m at the construction site, and there is no one on the job.”
“No shit?”
“Yeah, no shit.”
“No one?”
“It’s a ghost town.”
“It’s Saturday afternoon. Maybe they knocked off at noon? They are union, you know.”
“Yeah, I fuckin’ know!”
Austin reached the project manager’s office. Above the window in the door the sign read CONSTRUCTION OFFICE / RESTRICTED AREA.
As Austin reached for the doorknob and found it unlocked, he thought he detected an odd smell. He looked through the window. It was dark inside.
“Look,” Lane said, “I don’t know what else to tell you. And I—”
“Hang on a second,” Austin said.
He slipped the telephone into his shirt pocket and reached inside the door with his left arm, swiping at the wall for the light switch.
His fingers found it.
The office’s overhead fluorescent blubs flickered on—and, a split second after that, from deep within the office came a deafening explosion. It blasted through the walls and blew out windows, its white-hot fiery plume incinerating everything in its path.
—
Eight blocks away at City Hall, Willie Lane jerked the phone from his head when he heard the loud boom. He stared at the phone as the windows nearby rattled.
When he put the phone back to his ear, there was only silence.
[ THREE ]
Dignatio Worldwide
Third and Arch Streets
Old City
Philadelphia
Saturday, January 7, 1:10 P.M.
“You know, Matt, that Aimee is the chair of the board of directors of Camilla’s Kids,” Michael Grosse said, sitting at the head of the conference table. “But Camilla Rose also made Aimee the alternate executor, after me, of her estate. Aimee, of course, has long been made privy to all legal and financial matters concerning the charity. And now, as the process of getting Camilla Rose’s affairs in order begins, I’m sharing all I know with Aimee.”
Aimee Wolter sat to Grosse’s right, across from Matt Payne.
“Particularly, the financial irregularities,” she said.
Payne’s expression questioned this.
“It should go without saying that we’ve always had Camilla Rose’s best interests in mind,” Grosse said. “That cannot be said for others.”
“It’s not pretty, Matt,” Aimee said. “In fact, it’s criminal. And it’s why I’ve asked Michael to share with you everything he’s told me. I think it could help explain what happened with Camilla Rose.”
“I hope so,” Payne said, “because I have to tell you it’s not looking good. There’s that short gap in time that we simply can’t find out what happened. One of our big hopes was what we’d find on her phone. But The Krow—he’s one of my techs, supersharp—said that it was completely destroyed in the fall.”
Wolter thought about that, then said, “How do I know that if you find a killer, it won’t reflect badly on Camilla Rose?”
Payne locked eyes with her.
“I don’t know if it will or it won’t. That is out of my control. My job is to hunt down the miserable sonsofbitches who take others’ lives. There’s a Homicide saying that goes I speak for the dead. That may seem trite to some, but it’s absolutely true.
I give a voice to those who cannot defend themselves from the grave. Camilla Rose had her issues, but I don’t think suicide was one of them, and I’m doing my best to find out what happened.”
Wolter nodded.
“And I commend you,” she said. “I do. But you said it’s out of your control, if you find a killer, that it reflects badly on Camilla Rose . . .”
“Yes. Not that that’s what I want. I count myself among her big fans.”
“But, you see, it’s not out of my control. I get paid a lot of money by important people to control the message. That’s what I do, Matt, and I’m damn good at it. And right now it looks best for Camilla Rose, for her legacy, to have people believe the best. If there’s a killer, I’ll work around that, put her in the best light. But if you don’t find one, then the narrative is that it was simply a tragic accident. She slipped. She’s gone. And her kindness will continue to give to those in need. End of story.”
Payne nodded.
Aimee went on. “If there is some miserable son of a bitch, to borrow your words, indeed responsible for doing that to Camilla Rose, I want him to pay, to suffer the consequences—and more. I just don’t think, depending on what is learned, that there’s any good reason to drag her through the mud.”
“You say that like you know there’s an ugly story.” He paused, then added, “There was coke and Ecstasy—MDMA, the synthetic psychoactive—found in her place. The MA’s short for methamphetamine. So speed with a hallucinogenic twist. For all we know, she may have thought she could fly. Toxicology tests will detect what she took, if anything.”
Michael Grosse said, “Johnny was snorting something last night. I assumed it was coke.”
“Well, he’s easily the source. But being in a hospital bed when she died clears him. At least of that.”
“I don’t know of an ugly story,” Aimee said. “As far as I know—and I like to think that I know her very well—there’s not one. And I personally have never seen her with drugs.” She sighed. “Let’s be realistic. I’ve done damage control for families who had loved ones murdered. You and I know that if someone did kill her, the odds against finding that person are high. What’s that saying about the low clearance rate for homicides? Three out of four murderers walk.”
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